Sexual assault awareness urged

Victims often silent due to shame, fear of attacker

Paul Grondah, Times Union

By Paul Grondahl

Published 8:09 pm, Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Dr. Chame Blackburn, left speaks with Kaylin Dawson, sexual assault nurse coordinator in the room allocated for sexual abuse cases at the Albany Medical Center Wednesday morning April 23, 2014 in Albany, N.Y. This was part of the program marking the Sexual Assault Awareness month. (Skip Dickstein / Times Union)

A rape kit is laid out in the room allocated for sexual abuse cases at the Albany Medical Center Wednesday morning April 23, 2014 in Albany, N.Y. This was part of the program marking the Sexual Assault Awareness month. (Skip Dickstein / Times Union)

Although the number of reported sexual assaults in Albany has decreased substantially so far this year, staff at Albany Medical Center collect forensic evidence from roughly 110 victims of sexual violence annually.

Victims have ranged from two weeks of age to 99 years old.

"It's really hard work emotionally," said Dr. Chame Blackburn, a mother of six and director of Albany Med's Sexual Assault Forensic Examiners program, or SAFE. "We have a culture of blaming the victims. We need a cultural shift to say that this is not acceptable."

Sexual assault remains an underreported crime due to shame, stigma and a victim's fear of testifying against a known attacker in court, Blackburn said.

Unlike other areas of the country where legislation has been introduced to address a vast backlog of tens of thousands of rape kits that languish with unprocessed evidence, the response is timely and thorough at the State Police crime lab in Albany and has led to successful prosecutions, Albany Police Chief Steven Krokoff said.

"We have no backlog," Krokoff said Wednesday at a news conference at Albany Medical Center that showcased staff and resources available around the clock.

The event coincided with Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Results are typically available within six to eight weeks from the State Police, Blackburn said.

There has been a 38 percent decrease in reported sexual assaults for the first four months of 2014 compared to the same period last year, Krokoff said. He attributed the decrease to improved prosecution using DNA evidence gathered at Albany Med, as well as heightened awareness.

It remains a challenge to convince victims to report sexual assaults in a timely fashion when DNA evidence — viable up to 96 hours after the attack — can still be collected for a criminal prosecution, Krokoff said.

They also test blood and urine for so-called date rape drugs, but those metabolize quickly in the body and are difficult to detect within hours, Blackburn said.

About 85 percent of the victims of sexual assault know their attackers, and alcohol is involved in about 70 percent of the cases, Blackburn said. The majority of victims are young women between the ages of 15 and 24, and many are college students, she said. About five of the 100 victims examined at the hospital each year are men, she said.

There are 19 forensic examiners who work in Albany Med's sexual assault program. It was formed in 1998 and was one of the first of its kind in the state. Several examiners have requested a hiatus given the emotional intensity of the work, said Kaylin Dawson, sexual assault nurse coordinator and a mother of three. "You take it home with you," Dawson said. "It's really hard to think about somebody doing that to a child."

College students who have been sexually assaulted are often too traumatized to call their parents during evidence collection at the hospital. It falls to Dawson to break the news to parents. "That's an awful phone call to have to make," she said.

Evidence collection is a lengthy and intrusive procedure that typically takes two to three hours, but can take as long as six hours depending on the victim's age and emotional state. The so-called rape kit involves 15 separate steps of evidence collection. It includes swabbing the mouth and genital area for saliva and semen and scraping under fingernails for DNA. Precautions are taken to prevent contamination. Evidence includes victims' clothes and any debris found on their body.

After processing, the evidence is entered into a state and national DNA database of criminals, and matches have led to successful prosecutions in cases in which the victim does not know the attacker, Blackburn said.

Even after evidence collection, some victims get cold feet. There are currently six rape kits stored in a refrigerator while victims make a final decision whether they want to proceed with a criminal prosecution, Dawson said. After a month, Dawson calls each victim and tries to convince the person to go forward. "If they're absolutely adamant about not reporting it, I discard the evidence. I hate to do that," Dawson said.